Over on the YO2LDK blog, he posted about using a portable Wi-Fi router meant for IoT applications.

This router runs OpenWRT with an "nice" GUI overlay.

The early version of this was limited due to only 8MB of Flash memory. The newer version offers 16MB.

Here is a shot for scale on how tiny this is outside of the enclosure. I think I had the cover off in less than 30 minutes of delivery!!

There is another device I have played with made by TP-LINK (Model # TL-WR703N) but is more expensive and not as robust as I am finding with this GL-iNet one which was $27/each to the door (not including shipping)

So far:

-Have gotten rtl_tcp working to stream an SDR dongle I/Q values to a remote computer for processing. Same as the blog's author.

-Also while poking around the stock firmware on the router, its possible to install preloaded applihoneyions such as dump1090 (which was going to be my next project anyway!!!), so this was done quicker than scheduled. Nice!

Next up:

Its possible to telnet into the device, so need to figure out how to wipe the device, install OpenWRT on it without the Chinese (and English) GUI and replace that with AREDN for mesh.

Simply installing the .bin file from AREDN did not work and expected as much.

Other side projects:

Out of the box, works as a Wi-Fi repeater, USB camera host for streaming over Wi-Fi via the USB port built in to the router and as a "honey pot" with a USB flash thumb drive as a NAS. So this thing can do a lot and it should be easy to get this to do all sorts of things.

There is an add on PoE module that needs to be soldered in for $5. The open pads on the board have been mapped already, so will make my own PoE injector to run from 12v down to 5v instead of standard 48v PoE

There is an embedded Wi-Fi Antenna already present. I got the version with the board level connector and unfortunately a RP-SMA connector for the included antenna. This is getting replaced with a standard polarity SMA right away!

Note the header for I/O already installed. The switch is programmable as are the LED's in the software plus the reset switch if you don't want it to reset anything.